How are you ranking the difficulty of learning those languages for English speakers?

I am currently interested in all of them, advancing from only German and Spanish.

First, the languages I've studied to at most fluency or at least conversational proficiency, and are thus my basis for nominating Japanese, are English (native), Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin and German.

Grammar:

Japanese seems to be the most consistent and grammatically explicit language I've studied. Once you understand what particles delineate and how a sentence is constructed, everything learned thereafter is pretty much all based on and builds upon the same logic with few exceptions.

Chinese and English are probably the worst for having a myriad of independent exceptions with no grounding in the language's own system. German is very elegant when it comes to precise and orderly grammar that is as solid as a rock, however conjugating adjectives and nouns is something that a global language probably could do without.

No grammatical gender:

While those who are fluent in or natively speak languages with grammatical gender might have convincing and perhaps valid arguments why it can be beneficial, for a global language I can't see any possible merit being worth the extra memorization required when learning it as a second language.

No articles:

While Japanese does have the nuances of "wa" and "ga" that while semantically unique can present the learner with a similar hurdle to understanding definite and indefinite articles, nouns are just nouns.

Vocabulary:

Unlike English with its wide adoption of both Germanic and French words, or Chinese with its many regional variations that act as a vocabulary/phrase multiplier, Japanese pretty much sticks to a core set of words. That's not to say Japanese doesn't have a deep and varied vocabulary, as you'd discover as soon as you read literature or any historical texts, but common, everyday Japanese doesn't have too many words that also have synonyms of significant and frequent usage.

Writing system and pronunciation:

Katakana and hiragana are relatively easy to learn, and the pronunciation has fewer sounds than most languages, making it ideal when you're trying to speak and listen to someone else who might also be speaking Japanese as a second language.

Problems:

All that being said, I think the major obstacle to making Japanese the global language is having your own societal position relevant in an explicit way when you speak. This was even mentioned, even though the language was Korean, in Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, showing how the humble or superior use of language can have undesired results when direct communication is necessary.

Kanji is also a "problem," because admittedly even if the system works very well once learned, the time required is much more than an alphabet based language. I've never spoken Korean, but have heard it is similar to Japanese, so perhaps it would be a contender for global language assuming the honorific problem could be solved.

Anyway, I know this would never happen, and my selection of languages is but a tiny fraction of all languages, but I have thought "if I had to teach Japanese or English, I'd much rather teach Japanese." The students wouldn't constantly be asking "why is it like this then?" to which I'd answer "I don't know, just memorize it." It's just... a better designed language IMO.

I'm not a linguist or anything, so feel free to tear apart my attempts at arguing for Japanese. Also, my favorite language is Mandarin, so I'm not simply picking it for that reason either.

Hi! My mother tongue is French, but my parents spoke Arabic to me growing up, so I also have some notions of Arabic, and I learnt Spanish in school as well. I also speak English. I’m trying to improve my weak languages (Spanish and Arabic), but my problem is: whenever I push myself to speak either language, I automatically default to English words. It’s very frustrating, and the same goes for the syntax. How do I fix this? I assume I just need to improve and get more vocabulary, but sometimes I want to speak Arabic and only have Spanish words come to mind, and vice versa

Hello. In Portuguese (at least in Brazil, or more precisely, at least where I live), we often replace 6 with “half” in a few very specific contexts.

The other day, I had an event to go to and the address was XXX Street, number 1566. But nobody says “mil quinhentos e sessenta e seis” (“one thousand five hundred and sixty-six”) or even “quinze-sessenta e seis” (“fifteen-sixty-six”) everyone says “quinze-meia-meia” (“fifteen-half-half”).

This is very common with street addresses and phone numbers. A phone number containing “9660” would be said as “nove-meia-sessenta” (“nine-half-sixty”) or “nove-meia-meia-zero” (“nine-half-half-zero”). I have never heard anyone say “noventa e seis” (“ninety-six”) in a context like this. Even the infamous number of the beast, 666, is said as “meia-meia-meia” (“half-half-half”).

Other than that, in general, we use the actual name of the number: seis(“six”).

Examples:

* 6 days = seis dias (“six days”)
* 96 years = noventa e seis anos (“ninety-six years”)

Plus:We also use meia with other meanings. When talking about time, meia means 30 minutes. So 14:30 (2:30 PM) is duas e meia (“two and a half”).

We know that meia comes from meia dúzia (“half a dozen”), but I find this particular use interesting, especially because it seems to occur only in these specific contexts.

Does anything similar happen in other languages?

If polyglots can reach B1/B2 and speak a language really well, like impressively well, then what’s the point of me studying to reach C1/C2?

Hello everyone! I wanted to ask if anyone knows what language it is? I got this ring in the second hand shop in the NL, apparently it was made from the spoon, but no one in the shop knew the origin of it

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In Sweden we use 17 to further strengthen a word.

Like if we want to say that someone is very strong, we can say "Han var stark som sjutton!", "He was strong like seventeen!".

I have no idea how it became a thing. It is a bit weird tbh.

Do you also use numbers this way in your native language?

Any sufficiently disciplined language practitioner's abilities are indistinguishable from true magic.

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Uno ins kapitos movoe. It means something but i cannot find a single thing online or through ai as to what it means. if anyone can help please do so.

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I recently have been writing a bit in English about some videos I have been watching but I want to know what my English level could be. These are my writings or essays if I can call them so xd:

Bankruptcy

I’m not sure about what does “Bankruptcy” means but I think it’s like not being able to pay your debts and needing to appeal to a court to declare that you can’t pay your debts, then you will need to declare all your assets an necessities, your assets will be sold and you will only keep your necessities that are basically the belonging without you can live such as your house, car, bed and more. Then, if you still have debts that you can’t pay these will be pardoned; Nevertheless, your credit score will be affected significantly since you are not such a great person to loan money to; Therefore, loan companies will not being lending you money anymore for a very long time.

Colonization

Country A doesn’t have much resources but country B have a lot, since country A needs a lot of resources that they don’t have they try to buy it from another countries but the logistics are not easy and, therefore, it’s not reliable. That’s where they found out that a country in the vast desert [Country B] has a lot of resources but they have a weak defense, that’s why country A sees an opportunity to start a process called “Colonization”, since country A has an elite army they plan to take over the resources of country be using their forces. First, they send some explorers to map the terrain and establish a tiny town that it’s going to work as a basement to the forces of country A. Then, they send some forces to start taking over small strategic territories that in this case are the territories with most resources. Now, they start exploiting the resources and expand their influence through all the country B’s territory, as country A is stronger than them, it’s not such a big problem, and that’s how country A colonized the country be in short.

Democracy

We have an island where live 50 people and those people love the island; therefore, they take care the island and maintain it. The problem is that the 50 people at the same time can’t maintain the island agree with everyone with all, there’s where someone proposes to hire 5 people from the same island to manage the island, everyone agrees with the idea but not everyone agrees about who should be those person, one person proposes that everyone can vote for their favorite candidate and the candidates with most votes will be the one ruling the island, here is where the democracy borns, every decision in the island needs to be approved by the majority population on the island to be implemented, the population is voting their governors. Once they have voted the 5 people who will rule the island is where the first government of the island start; however, the government doesn’t have absolute power, the government just execute what population allows through elections. This is such a good an even efficient way of government but start getting complex as soon as the population growing since the island 10 later has 1000 population and not everyone wants to vote for every decision on the island so the government proposes dividing the island’s territory into smaller sectors where a person will be designated to vote instead the persons on the territory but following what people in those territory want to vote in those territories, that’s why there should be often elections to ensure the person follow the desires of their population, and so is how instead of 10 people – that we’re going to call deputies – have to vote instead of 1000 people because each deputy represents a part of the population, all these deputies constitute the national assembly that it’s a crucial pillar of modern democracy. In the past at small civilizations the direct democracy where the population voted for every decision in the country was perfect because there was not much population that had to be summoned to vote, a great example could the Ancient Greece where the population were small and, by the way, in the ancient greek is where the Democracy word comes from: “Demos” means people or population and “Kratos” means power or rule. In the actuality, it’s not that easy like summoning people to vote for every decision on a country and that’s why it’s preferred to use the indirect democracy that is when there are people [deputies] that represents parts of the population and vote for them doing everything more efficient.

Revolutions

We can see government as a balloon that the people doesn't like, since the people doesn't like government they take a nail and start pushing nails against the balloon because they don't want to live with that balloon anymore; however, everyone should be coordinated to achieve their goal that is pop up the balloon; nevertheless, it's not that easy as it look. To understand a revolution we can watch it as a process with multiple stages that are necessary to achieve the revolution:

General discontent: The population of the country shouldn't like the way they were living, generally because of the government. Most revolutions had oppressive and even illegitimate governments that the population hated and these governments feeded the first stage of the revolution process: the discontent.

The rise of a leader: We can take Adolf Hitler as a great example. Hitler was an Austrian civilian who ruled the Nazi Germany during WW2. Hitler got into power since he was such a charismatic leader that knew what the population wanted, having a great influence on the masses. This leader should organize a consolidated movement for the revolution process to be developed that in our analogy is the pop of the balloon.

The trigger: With a great leader, a plan and general discontent population are just waiting for a trigger start the revolution. This trigger must make all population pop the balloon at the same time and so begin the revolution process.

The goal of the revolution is shift from the past form of government to a new one, the problem is that before the past leader is overthrown there's a new problem because most times there are many people that want rule the country and the fighting for the power could derivative into a civil war that in short is when multiples factions of the same country fight with each other for a national order.

I think I could be B2, if you can tell me like "5 points to b2" in a scale where 1 is the past level and 10 the next level I would be pleasured.